Fallible wrote:A longtime Steinberg fan here and am on a library wait list for the bio. What did you think of the book itself? As for Steinberg, I never saw a work more instantly recognizable or original than his (except for maybe Charles Addams). And he is always the subject of the great debate between cartoonists and artists or cartoonists/artists or artists/cartoonists on whether cartoons are art (in my book, they are, just not fine art).

The book is a serious, scholarly (100 pp of footnotes!) biography and the writing doesn't sparkle. But his life is so fascinating, with so many famous people turning up at every juncture, that it has really been very enjoyable. Steinberg was often compared to the Swiss artist Paul Klee, and could be bristly about not being taken seriously. But he did very well, as his wartime experience shows. His personal life was admirable in many ways—he never failed to help his poorer relatives when they asked for money—and less admirable in others, as you'll find out. The biographer chronicles the good and the bad without judging.

Seeing his art on a computer screen doesn't convey the full effect. This museum exhibit catalog book...

Thanks for the bio review. I've seen most of his other books. It's funny, I just realized that if you saw a Steinberg drawing alone, as in the book collection, you might not (although I'd get arguments here) think of it as a cartoon. But put it in a magazine like The New Yorker, and it is a cartoon, even expanding that definition. I like that his work could stand on its own because, I think, of its originality.

Stettin Station by David Downing. Downing is a British writer married to a American woman and lives in England. Stettin Station is the third in the series that features British journalist John Russell of Anglo-American parentage living in, and reporting from, Berlin during the thirties and forties

A friend who visited Ft. Benning on business brought me back a handful of Infantry Magazines, which I read through. The magazine put "The Killing Zone, My Life in the Vietnam War" on a recommended reading list....so I got it and read it.

It was a "just the facts" account of his shortened Vietnam tour. The writer was an OCS lieutenant assigned as a replacement in the 4th Infantry Division near Pleiku in late 67 and early 68. The author reported that his platoon was in almost constant contact with VietCong and NVA units. There was no rest from constant patrolling, ambushes, and defensive perimeters. He described daily activities and noted the following about c rations:

"Sounds of disappointment and joy about the meals depended on each man’s taste. Ham and lima beans were universally hated by everyone except for the one man in each platoon who was a culinary masochist. We all bartered back and forth with all the expertise of gem dealers, trading meals until our packs were full of the next three days’ treasure."

Tall Trees, Tough Men by Robert E. Pike, is a history of logging in New England. One of my clients gave this to me and I thought it was going to be a very dry read, but Mr. Pike could write, and it is a suprisingly interesting book. Pike had quite a life, here is a link to his obituary:http://www.nytimes.com/1997/08/11/nyreg ... ies.htmlMr. gatorman

hudson wrote:A friend who visited Ft. Benning on business brought me back a handful of Infantry Magazines, which I read through. The magazine put "The Killing Zone, My Life in the Vietnam War" on a recommended reading list....so I got it and read it.

It was a "just the facts" account of his shortened Vietnam tour. The writer was an OCS lieutenant assigned as a replacement in the 4th Infantry Division near Pleiku in late 67 and early 68. The author reported that his platoon was in almost constant contact with VietCong and NVA units. There was no rest from constant patrolling, ambushes, and defensive perimeters. He described daily activities and noted the following about c rations:

"Sounds of disappointment and joy about the meals depended on each man’s taste. Ham and lima beans were universally hated by everyone except for the one man in each platoon who was a culinary masochist. We all bartered back and forth with all the expertise of gem dealers, trading meals until our packs were full of the next three days’ treasure."

I read this, bobbing around in a boat with 15 other tourists in the Galapagos. It wasn't the best of groups-- lot of tension, so it really kept my mind off it. Yes, very good.

We came so close, and mostly due to miscommunication and misunderstanding and misappreciation. Both sides at times acted liked crazy men. Nobody comes out of it really well. Macnamara's discovery in 1992 in Moscow that the Russians had armed their missiles, and US intelligence was convinced they had not, and the Russians assumed that the Americans knew that they had....

I met a guy once who was preparing to be part of the spearhead of the US invasion of Cuba-- they had the Marines and the paratroops all ready. Given that history has shown that the Cubans tend to shoot back (Grenada, and they did well against the South Africans in Angola) it would have been no cakewalk-- even excepting the fact that the Russian officers in command of the nuclear missiles had orders to 'use, not lose' if they came under attack.

What it teaches you is that you can sleepwalk into disaster by defining your 'vital interests' too widely, or convincing yourself you cannot afford to lose prestige or 'face' by backing down. Also that you can (Kruschev) best someone once, and assume you can just bully them again-- underestimating the violence of their reaction.

And then there was the Soviet number 2 on a sub, who when the US was dropping practice depth charges to force it to surface, stopped his command from firing a nuclear torpedo at the US destroyer, an act which surely would have caused a US counterstrike....

one of 2 men, the other Colonel Petrovsky (?) (who during the Reagan era, when the Soviet radars showed an incoming attack by 6-8 missiles, did not inform the Kremlin but calmly concluded it was a technical error, which it was), who pretty definitely saved the world from destruction.

And here, for you oldtimers, is a puzzler. A central character, a bookseller, is typing away in a shabby office:

"A little bell rang; the machine dated from the age when typewriters had this contrivance for informing the operator that the end of a line would be reached in two or three more taps."

OK, folks. When did typewriters ever not have such a "contrivance?" Certainly spiffy new Royals had them in the 1960s, and so did IBM Selectrics.

The book was published in 1923. I'm not quite sure what era it is set in. Typewriters started to become ubiquitous and more circa 1890 or so. We know that "21 years ago" the character in question was bored by his uncle's stories of the building of the Underground from Clerkenwell to Euston Square, and Wikipedia says the Euston Square tube station was built in 1863, so, I think the story must be set around 1890-1910 or so.

A long time friend has "Tracer 1" on his license plate....I know it was related to his 4th Infantry Division service in Vietnam. When he mentioned that he was reading "The Shake 'n Bake Sergeant" I decided to read it. The author told about going to NCO school at Ft Benning in the late 60's...the slang name for the school was "Shake and Bake". When the author read someone slam "Shake and Bake soldiers in Jesse Ventura's book, "The Teams", he was prompted to write the book. The author describes his growth as a sergeant from a novice to a competent leader. The TRACERS or small long range reconnaissance teams have a part in his story. My Tracer 1 friend has since compared notes with the author and they served at the same time but didn't know each other. If you like "just the facts" Vietnam accounts, you might like this.The last part of the book gave the author's account of his platoon and company locked into a several day battle with a larger North Vietnamese unit.